DVD
REVIEW: CRAZY EIGHTS(AFTER DARK
HORROR FEST)
03/10/08

It’s finally here!! One of
the coolest events in one of my favorite genres in movies.,
the “Eight Films to Die For” are out on DVD, so horror geeks
rejoice. “Crazy Eights” is just one creepy installment of
eight films that make up this event, an event that brings
together the geniuses of the horror movie genre and allows
them to make films that are usually too graphic and horrific
to make it onto mainstream theater release. “Crazy Eights”
is a mix of some very well known horror films such as “House
on Haunted Hill”, “The Grudge” , and “The Ring”. It takes a
very unoriginal idea, that has been done, then overdone,
incorporates some familiar, but not overly famous actors,
and a new name and puts it in a well known event to give it
momentum. Unfortunately, it wasn’t worthy of being known as
one of the films to die for.

This film is about six childhood friends brought together by
the funeral of a seventh, all of them haunted by nightmares
of some long forgotten childhood. Their deceased friend
leaves them a box with a map inside that leads them to a
trunk which at first seems like a time capsule of sorts ,
filled with toys and items from their time spent together
twenty years earlier. Then in trying to move the trunk, the
bones of a child are uncovered. They begin to flee and are
instead lead by some unseen force to a strange house which
becomes increasingly familiar to them and begins to spark
memories of a childhood trauma they had somehow buried in
their subconscious . Unfortunately, their childhood has not
forgotten them and it becomes guilt incarnate, slowly
collecting their lives one by one as payment for their part
in the long forgotten tragedy.

The film has a cast of some pretty well known actors such as
Traci Lords, famous for her days in porn and some mainstream
B movies as well. Lords is a surprisingly good and
believable actress, and an impressive bright point in an
otherwise dull and predictable movie. She deserves more
credit than what this mediocre film can provide her, but she
definitely made the best of the poor writing and weak
character that she was given. Also included in the cast was
Dina Meyer ( Saw 2, Starship Troopers), Gabrielle Anwar
(Scent of a Woman, For Love or Money), George Newbern (
Father of the Bride, Doppelganger), and Frank Whaley
(Vacancy, Swing Kids), all of which are familiar faces , and
all of which did the best they could with what they had. The
entire movie was a series of suspenseful moments in which
your sure something big is going to happen at any moment,
but it never does. You get a lot of small, subtle events
which startle a bit, but you never see more than a glimpse
of the entity and even those are very small, a hand , some
creepy legs framed with a dirty gown, and maybe a shadow.
That’s pretty much all, and the only thing the movie has to
offer is the creepiness of their surroundings. The effect of
the location and the dark setting did make it very creepy,
but when nothing truly big happens, its very disappointing.
The irony lies in the fact that I didn’t realize how bad the
movie was till it actually ended, so you have to actually
sit through the entire movie to realize that the movie was a
complete waste of your time. Without revealing too much, I
just want to say that the last few frames at the end of the
movie completely invalidated the whole film rearing it
completely nonsensical and should have been either
completely removed, or rewritten to explain its connection
to the rest of the film. However, because of this addition
at the end , it made a creepy B horror film into a complete
waste of 80 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.